It is time to say goodbye...
Unlike the other 3 volunteer teachers before me, I did not shed a tear or got emotional like them giving my farewell speech before the entire school. I doubt I have time to get emotional while struggling to manage my 10mins speech in proper THAI. P'Wad was very porud of my speech and said that all the students kept quiet and paid attention to me whereas they will always be disinterested whenever the principal gives a speech. Luckily, the principal is away on business trip then! *whew!*
The night before, the teachers came over to my host family's house for a farewell dinner. I tried to cook them my favourite lotus roots n corn soup(mum's recipe) but I can't find any lotus roots in the market...they have a lot of lotus flowers though. Ended up cooking a simply dish of fried kailan with sliced pork. Cooking in the kitchen is challenging...no sink, no proper table to do your cleaning, chopping, marinating, etc. I was squatting and chopping my veg on the dirt floor...and finally, frying everything in the pan while squatting over the charcoal stove. Squat, squat, squat.
I gave my final classes in the morning and was happy to have my last class with one of my fave class Mattayong 6/2. This bunch of 18yrs olds has English the level of a 12yr old. But through one of the games we played, I was very happy to see the usually lazy students plowing through their English books trying to find the words and making effort to pronounce the difficult English words...especially those containing "R" or "S".
It has been a very unique experience for me to be a teacher in the rural countryside where some poor students wear torn uniforms or has pen drawwings on them, socks with huge holes and wierd schoolbags(a 18yr old guy was carrying a Hello Kitty bag). The most interesting thing was to have students who are ke-toi's(lady boys) in my class...they are usually the smarter ones and better in English and they are such lovely students to teach! One ketoi was so vain he couldn't stop looking into his mirror throughout class...and using a hanky to wipe his forehead every 5mins.
My days as an Aajarn are finally over after 1 month. I will miss my host family a lot(I think the host students cried when I left)...especially the Grandmother...I taught her to say "Elephant" just before I left...and she's a really potential English student! One of the rare few Thais who can pronounce the "r" and "s" correctly!
Time to move on to Angkor Wat next....stay tuned!
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